My peace plan is simple: Israel defeats its enemies. Victory uniquely creates circumstances conducive to peace. Wars end, the historical record confirms, when one side concedes defeat and the other wins. This makes intuitive sense, for so long as both sides aspire to achieve their ambitions, fighting continues or it potentially can resume. The goal [...]
Author Archive | Daniel Pipes
How The West Could Lose
After defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists? On the face of it, its military preponderance makes victory seem inevitable. Even if Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the cold war. What do [...]
America Alone: Europe is Finished Predicts Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn, political columnist and cultural critic, has written a remarkable book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (Regnery). He combines several virtues uncommonly found together
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the 1979-1981 U.S. Embassy Takeover
Soon after his election as president of Iran, on June 25, 2005, pictures of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged showing him as a hostage-taker. An Associated Press photograph showed a man looking very much like a younger version of today’s Ahmadinejad holding a blind-folded man, apparently five days after the U.S. embassy in Tehran was seized on [...]
Decision Time on Iran
As the Iranian government announced last week a doubling of its uranium enrichment program, the United Nations Security Council bickered over a feeble European draft resolution. It would do no more than prohibit Iranian students from studying nuclear physics abroad, deny visas for Iranians working in the nuclear area, and end foreign assistance for Iran’s [...]
In Iraq, Stay the Course — But Change It
As coalition policy reaches a crisis, may I resurrect an idea I have been flogging since April 2003? It offers a way out of the current debate over staying the course (as President George W. Bush has long advocated) or withdrawing troops on a short timetable (as his critics demand). My solution splits the difference, [...]
Don’t Bring That Booze into My Taxi
A minor issue at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) has potentially major implications for the future of Islam in the United States. Starting about a decade ago, some Muslim taxi drivers serving the airport declared that they would not transport passengers visibly carrying alcohol, in transparent duty-free shopping bags, for example. This stance stemmed [...]
Israel: No Longer a Paper Tiger?
The blame for the current fighting falls entirely on Israel’s enemies, who deploy inhuman methods in the service of barbaric goals. While I wish the armed forces of Israel every success against the terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon and hope they inflict a maximum defeat on Hamas and Hezbollah while taking a minimum of casualties, [...]
How Israel Can Win
Since I argued in an earlier column that Israel can and must defeat the Palestinian Arabs, a barrage of responses have contested this thesis. Some were trivial (Ha’aretz published an article challenging my right to opine on such matters because I do not live in Israel) but most raised serious issues that deserve an answer. [...]
Israel’s Substitute for Victory: Managing Conflict Without Resolving It
As Israelis go to the polls, not one of the leading parties offers the option of winning the war against the Palestinian Arabs. It’s a striking and dangerous lacuna. First, some background. Wars are won, the historical record shows, when one side feels compelled to give up on its goals. This is only logical, for [...]
